Singularity, By Charlotte Grimshaw

Reprising characters familiar from her award-winning short-story collection, Opportunity, Charlotte Grimshaw once more trains her eye on the suburban streets of Auckland and the beaches of the west coast of New Zealand.

Highly descriptive portraits of mostly middle-class life catch up with Viola, a novelist on the brink, painter Per, and Simon, a medic with a dissolute dad.

In the volume's title story, Emily, a journalist sent on a media junket to Uluru, is distracted by some colourful companions such as an acquitted murderer. Elemental landscapes provide the backdrop to some highly evolved emotional states.